Somewhere in England, 1928

As an investigation goes horribly wrong, William and Thomas must run for their lives. This CGDC #10 fourth-place finishing entry is a classic style point-and-click adventure game. Escape through the mansion before the monster catches up to you. Can you help the investigators escape before it's too late?

40 Comments

Awesome game!! Love the style! The Cthulhu angle is a great idea, the sound effects between scenes add a lot as well. Only thing that could have made it better would have been a hotkey for toggling between action and look and if it was longer so I could play more. Good job!

Niffy, niche, Nietzschean. The game that is and that isn't. The story that is and that isn't. It strives to be clever, terrifying, witty, and jarring all at the same time while also being mindful and relishable of its own limitations. This game is its own beast, proudly strutting its pixelated flair or lack thereof while blowing most of its competition out. Getting used to its dated system may demand an acquired taste, but its quirky story and characters will charm and bewilder.

THEME (3 out of 5)
You're in a giant mansion.
See a big tentacle monster set loose.
Run from big tentacle monster.
Escape from big tentacle monster.
On paper, the game isn't deserving of Most Thematically Interactive Experience award, but what built around its simple theme helped the game to really build on its theme. Understanding the plights of our heroes really drive up the tensions, making the game more faithful to the pure concept of escape even if it is hampered by some of its shortcomings.

IMMERSION + APPEAL (4 out of 5)
Saying no to our helpless heroes being chased by a big tentacle monster set within pixelated mansion would equals to having no soul. The fragility of characters and their witty remarks made them felt grounded and real. It helps that their ambiguous backstory elevates the simple story into captivating saga of escape, even if it is marred by tiny few yet glaring gameplay flaws.

CONCEPT + INNOVATION (4 out of 5)
It is a pure escape game, but an extremely well written, paced, and immersive one at that. The level-by-level system helps solidify the theme of escape, knowing that escaping from the monster is the one true goal. This system also helps to allow the story to grow, even little by little.

PLOT + COMPOSITION (4 out of 5)
Continuing the topic of story, what needs to be mentioned once more is how well written the game is and how dense and light it is with details. The characters are instantly likeable with witty (yet light) characterization and humanizing observations by our heroes. The amount of backstory (or little of it) are thoroughly interesting yet underutilized. It can't be helped that the game drops in and out of only the situation with big tentacle monster. There are enough layers in the game that warrant second playthrough yet light enough to allow the rest to be filled by imaginative roleplayers. This is exactly what games should be.

GAMEPLAY + TECHNICALITY (3 out of 5)
A bliss for any affectionate point-and-click fanatics, though it comes with a few baggage. The interface is a bit difficult to learn at first, but is a breeze to use after just a few exploratory clicks. Inventory system is nicely designed, though bit too lacking and underutilized at times. The cursor is extremely small and can leads to misses with hotspots several time, though the game thankfully doesn't demands nor requires any action-time-events nor frantic gimmick mini-games. What odd is that our main character often disappear and reappear whenever we click on hotspot (this can be explained away by not needing any fancy animations, though I disgress...) The only flaw that truly annoys is when clicking with ACTION command, the game always reverts back to OBSERVATION command. It is a hassle having to click on ACTION over and over.

OVERALL (4 out of 5)
A little gem that tickles, prods, and intrigues any wandering souls who seek another gaming diamond in the rough.

Just in case you weren't aware, the actual judging of the competition is not handled like this. You are, of course, free to post your comments, analyses, and opinions of all the entries, but I would prefer if you would record your scores on the official judges scorecard instead of the comments, since they won't be counted here. Thank you!

I am aware that the actual judging and scoring are being done on different location and that the scores aren't being counted here. I am posting my reviews here because I feel every one of those developers deserve constructed feedback and help them understand how I score their games.

If it is recommended that I shouldn't be divulging the scores here, then I shall refrain from doing so. Also, I will be using spoiler tags to reduce the size of my reviews so thanks for the suggestion once again.

A fun little game. Biggest problems are the typo-riddled ending room and the on again off again nature of the gun.

Both as Thomas and William, the description of the gun was that it was empty. But William uses it to (presumably) shoot open the lock on the drinks cabinet, and Thomas is aiming is gun at the end as if he plans to fire it. The thing with Tommy ain't no big thang, but I was stalled at the drinks cabinet for longer than anywhere else because I wasn't bothering to fire an unloaded gun...

My problem with the game is how I have to use the hand and line up the red dot with each item. Other than that, its a fine game. I'm kinda wanting to know what happens next? Do they kill the monster and escape? And what happens to William?

Loved the way this was different - the pixelation, the interaction, the menus to do actions. I actually really like the red dot on the cursor - sometimes you never quite know which pixel the cursor is pointing to - this took out that issue. Wish it was longer and

Well it was fun. As a game it achieved the fact that it was enjoyable. A few things bugged me, namely the fact that whenever you interacted with something it would switch back to observation mode and that fading in and back out took a while. Minor stuff. I liked the game.

Yet, this is a story as much as it is a game. One I find quite laughable. Not because it's funny, but because it isn't there. We are tossed into a world with absolutely no idea what on earth is going on, and being confused at every quip, a bit frustrating at times.

Now that I read the theme description, I see a little bit more about this, but I'm still a little uneasy about the story. I would rather play a game with no story than a game with one that I don't get a grip on but am forced to.

By the end I was, "Okay, who are these people; what's with the big tentacle thing; why is that lady dressed all nice for supposedly being dead; why did she just go out and get a gun and sword, and why do they seem to be proficient at killing stuff?"

Maybe it was all explained in the first line of the blackscreen exposition thing, but that seems to instantly be skipped. No clue why. Probably my bad mouse.

I appreciated the story after reading the theme part, and I recognize you didn't have space, but it still was a bit distracting. William and Thomas were recognizable as characters, and that's at least something I got a hold of.

Clunky interaction with the magnifying glass and the hand. Once I had decided to switch over the the hand, after one click it would automatically switch back to the magnifying glass which would mean I would have to re-click on the hand. The idea is interesting and could be developed. Not enthralled with the graphics either.

From what I was able to play I liked it. The simplistic graphics adds a nice touch, along with the background sounds.

The only problem is that the game keeps on freezing for me at the same point. Right after I press the four buttons and the red button in the code at the liquor cabinet, a caption comes up, "Hmmm" and game seems to freeze. I can move the cursor around but nothing happens. This happens repeatedly for me.

Jay, same problems different day. What on earth in my computer could be blocking SOME games, but not all? This game and a couple of others were loading yesterday with a white screen and I never saw an ad or got the game. Today, it's telling me Shockwave Flash is out of date, but I constantly upgrade everything, so I know that's not actually true.

I'm on a MBP running Lion, browser Chrome. Most of the games in the competition are fine. This one, however, has not opened at all for me since the competition began. I'll try cleaning out my cache, but since this happens so frequently, I'm wondering if there is just some setting somewhere that I'm not aware I switched on (or off) that dislikes a few (but not all) games.

Check to see if perhaps you have 2 Flash Players installed in Chrome. If you do, then it may be an older version that the game won't run with and you'll need to disable it. If you need more hand-holding than that, please email me privately.

Was very strongly reminded of the Chzo mythos -- the art style, the tentacle monster, the control system... it's a good series, don't get me wrong, but it felt more like an installment of that series than a game of its own to me.

Great game! The only iffy part was how the control always defaults to observe, and like with others, I do feel that an easier way to toggle between the two control types would have made the game experience more smooth. The game was very entertaining and I hope that there will be similar games like this in the future!!

Odd; the first time I played this the 'reluctance' part sounded more like Tommy and Will were gay, especially the 'that talk's illegal' line in the Purple Room. Replaying it and it feels like there was a re-write at some point between then and now.

Whew, just played again and was finally able to finish. I'm so glad this one placed in the competition. The story is definitely its strongest point - I love the characters and wish I could see more of them (especially Harriet, the blood-soaked machine gun-wielding flapper). Well done, developer.

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